Hi, I’m Ryan MacLean, Co-founder and Producer at DrinkBox Studios. This week we’d like to tell you a bit more about the process we went through while trying to decide what features would make it into the new Super Turbo Championship Edition of Guacamelee!, and some of the iteration that followed.

Getting Started

When we started work on Guacamelee! STCE, way back in the spring of 2013, the first thing we did was to poll the team for ideas of features they’d like to see in an updated ‘next-gen’ version of the game.

Feedback on the (predictably massive) idea list was collected from everyone on the team. Sometimes, during the feedback collection process, more ideas would come out, which themselves would require additional feedback collection… so the process would loop; it took a while to get through it all. In the end, though, the design team had a useful list of ideas and thoughts to use as a reference while trying to define an actual ‘target feature’ list for the STCE version of the game.

Some suggestions were pretty predictably well-liked, e.g. that we should add new level content to the game. Other suggestions, even some seemingly simple ones, turned out to be surprisingly popular (e.g., that support should be added for multiple save slots).

Our earliest formal pitch document for the STCE version of the game, from May 2013, was based largely on analysis of the results of this idea generation & feedback process. That doc outlined the following features:

Emphasis on new uses of dimension swapping, introduction of a new power or ability

Possible inclusion of a new orb

Updated Boss Battles:

E.g. Possible inclusion of X’Tabay “Monster form”

Possible introduction of a Skeleton-form Alebrije

Skeleton Alebrije Concept

Co-op Improvements:

Improvements to bubbling system / controls

Platforming adjustments to minimize co-op frustration

Additional experiments with co-op camera systems

Possible addition of semi-competitive elements to co-op

Other / Misc.:

New enemy types

New “Ultra-Hard” difficulty mode

DLC integration (Skins, Infierno)

Difficulty smoothing

Remixed combat arenas

Multiple save slots

New Costumes

Some of these features made it into the final product more-or-less as originally imagined. Others were cut. Some expanded in scope (e.g. one new area became two huge new areas). A few proposed features went through a lengthy process of additional evolution and iteration, ending up fairly different in the final product than originally imagined.

Intenso (aka ‘Combo Aura’): New Feature Case-study #1

One of the high level ideas that appeared on our earliest wish-lists for this version of the game was that of a new ability or power for the player.

One specific proposal that was explored early on was called the “Combo-aura”. The original description for this concept was: "If I get a 20 hit combo, I want to gain an aura, which becomes more awesome the longer the combo lasts. A 100 hit combo puts me on fire. Really motivate people to combo".

We liked the idea of players receiving extra encouragement to extend combos in STCE, so we tried this out. When players reached pre-defined combo thresholds, an aura would appear around them, and they would begin to benefit from attack bonuses.

Early ‘Combo Aura’ Mockup

Unfortunately, we ran into some issues with this approach in early play-testing. The biggest problem was that in practice players tended to be restricted to using the ability in densely-populated areas where there were enough enemies to make it possible to maintain high combo counts. Unfortunately, these areas often didn’t correspond to the locations in the game where players most wanted a combat boost.

After considering this for a while, we decided to try modifying the combo aura system to operate based on a power that players could charge up by performing combos, and then use at will. The power’s current charge was represented by a new bar just under the health and stamina chunks in the HUD. Being able to choose when to activate this ability gave players more control, and it also seemed to help novice players with combat by giving them access to a combat boost they could reserve for moments when they felt most vulnerable. ‘Intenso’ was born!

Intensoooooooo!

Of course, much additional play-testing and iteration ensued: We still had to decide where/how the player would get Intenso, what specific benefits it would provide, possible store upgrade options, how it would be taught and reinforced, how powerful it would be, how it would look and sound when used, etc… All of that took a lot of time and work to sort out.

We wanted to improve the co-op experience from early on in STCE’s development. This objective was approached from a number of different angles, and multiple adjustments were made. Perhaps the single biggest change was the introduction of ‘Shadow Mode’.

Traditional Dimension Swapping and Co-op

When players defeat X’Tabay about a third of the way through Guacamelee!, they gain the ability to swap dimensions at will. In co-op play, the use of the ‘traditional’ form of this ability by either player causes both players to immediately swap to the new foreground dimension.

This can make dimension-swap-heavy platforming sections, such as the Tule Tree, somewhat tricky in co-op; players are essentially required to stay very close to one another if they want to actively complete these sections together. If players don’t synchronize their movements, one player’s dimension swap can pull the floor out from under the other.

The mechanics of traditional dimension swapping also have an impact on combat. When you’re fighting an enemy that is vulnerable in the foreground dimension only, if your partner decides to swap dimensions to engage an enemy in the other dimension, your target suddenly becomes invulnerable.

Independent Dimension Swapping (aka ‘Shadow mode’)

For STCE we decided to experiment with a modification that would allow players to swap dimensions independently of one another. With this, co-op partners could elect to cover opposite dimensions in combat (e.g. with one player taking care of foreground enemies while the other covers background-only/shadow enemies), and/or traverse dimension-swap-heavy platforming sections together without having to carefully synchronize every jump.

This idea went through a fairly lengthy period of evolution and testing. The physics system had to be modified. Many control schemes were tried.

There were definitely challenges with the core concept: For one thing, it takes some mental energy (and/or practice) to understand which platforms you can and cannot interact with when playing in the background dimension. Modifications were made to the foreground object / background object visual “sparkle” clues to try and make this more obvious. Even with these updates, some play-testers continued to prefer the simplicity of always sticking to the foreground dimension while platforming.

In the end, though, we decided to go ahead with support for ‘shadow mode’, as in most cases it seemed to yield positive results in playtesting. Given the option, the majority of co-op players we observed would choose to make use of shadow swapping when attempting to play through dimension-swap-heavy platforming sections together, rather than relying solely on traditional swapping. Many also seemed to enjoy using the shadow swap ability in co-op combat.

Shadow Mode Combat in Action!

After much iteration, we settled on a control scheme that would allow players to easily use either shadow swap or traditional dimension swap, with a different button mapped to each ability in co-op, giving them the ability to make their own decision about where to use each form of the ability.

It was a fair bit of work, but we hope the inclusion of shadow swapping, along with some of the other updates we’ve added to STCE, will help improve the overall co-op experience.

Hasta La Vista… Baby Calaca

We definitely had a lot of fun experimenting with and building out new features for Guac STCE - we hope people have just as much fun trying them out! Thanks for reading. Feel free to reach out to us with questions or comments via @DrinkBoxStudios on Twitter, or at www.facebook.com/DrinkBoxStudios.

Hi! I'm Jason Canam, Level Designer on Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition (STCE), here today to fill you in on some of what went into the level design of STCE.

New Area: The Volcano, aka ‘Pico de Gallo’

One of the biggest additions to Guacamelee! STCE is the inclusion of two brand new levels. These new levels, the Canal De Las Flores and Pico De Gallo, each contain multiple areas, feature new enemies, new characters, and explore new gameplay concepts.

Like a postcard for your ideal vacation of a gameplay paradise

One of the initial objectives of the level design was to ensure that the new level content was substantial. At first, I thought this simply meant "big", so the first drafts of the new levels were HUGE. Incredibly huge, in fact. Using a process known as "Whiteboxing", I was quickly able to create a prototype level that was fully playable.

A whiteboxed level is fully functional, but doesn't typically contain any visuals

When members of the development team tested out the prototype level for the first time, it took almost two hours to complete. I described it as a "microcosm of the Metroidvania formula contained within a single level"; the rest of the team called it "a maniac level designer's fever dream". The player was tasked with backtracking and retreading ground within the level multiple times. The level also featured one-way passageways, multiple switch activated doorways, and auto-scroll (forced progression) sections.

After doing more internal testing, we identified some problem spots and made plans to improve the overall quality of the level. This new level was much, much larger than any other in the game (by at least double) but it most definitely was not better. In fact, the biggest problem was that there wasn't really anything new, there was just more. So, it was back to the drawing table.

Through a sea of tears, I take notes during a level review meeting

For the first pass on this level, I had been given free rein to simply build. Seeing as how that didn't immediately work, we decided to try a more carefully planned approach. This time, I would sketch out some initial ideas on paper and we would discuss and iterate on the design earlier in the process. This proved to be a much more effective approach.

A concept narrative for the level was decided upon. This was important to nail down, as we wanted the level to fit seamlessly into the rest of the game world. It had to have purpose. This was also a boon to gameplay design, as the narrative concept fed into the level layout. Using "a skeleton factory inside a volcano" as the concept, I set about creating Pico De Gallo, one of the main new levels in Guacamelee! STCE.

New Gameplay Concepts

Since bigger wasn't necessarily better, and it was important to not simply have more, we needed something new. To make things easy for players to grasp, something new was created that combined familiar mechanics with new concepts. The new concept we introduced in Pico de Gallo was "dimensional behaviors".

In the original Guacamelee!, players used the Dimension Swap ability to shift instantly between the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead. This was primarily used to navigate through sections by having platforms, walls, and floors appear and disappear as you travelled between the two dimensions. The concept was expanded upon for Guacamelee! STCE by letting players manipulate the behavior of certain objects in the world by swapping dimensions. This allowed us to introduce new platforming challenges to the player while allowing them to use an ability they were already familiar with.

Even for players who had never played Guacamelee!, the Pico De Gallo level appears late enough in the game's progression that they have enough time (even on a first playthrough) to become familiar with the Dimension Swap ability before being faced with this new type of challenge.

Dangerous things become un-dangerous when you swap dimensions, but be careful because they become un-un-dangerous when you swap back!

This idea is used in a few different ways in the level, making dimensional behavior part of the Pico de Gallo’s unique gameplay identity.

Another way of introducing something "old, but new" was to take a look at a very common gameplay element of the game: arenas. Arenas are combat rooms that force players to battle through a series of enemies in order to proceed. The point of an arena is to confront the player with interesting enemies and challenging enemy combinations. Every Guacamelee! player is familiar with arenas, as they are one of the most common recurring gameplay features in the game.

Floors? Who needs floors?!?!

For Guacamelee! STCE, we expanded on the concept of arenas by adding in environmental hazards – in some cases making the rooms just as lethal as the enemies. This is particularly apparent in (though not exclusive to) STCE’s new levels, including Pico de Gallo.

For example, one such new arena challenges the player by having a spiked ceiling that slowly moves downward as they are fighting. The player must clear the arena before the spikes reach them, as touching the spikes results in an instant death. As the ceiling gets lower, it limits the player’s mobility, as the use of certain moves that send the player into the air becomes dangerous. Crafty players can make use of the spikes by hitting/throwing enemies upwards into them.

Secrets

Guacamelee! is filled with hidden chests that are key to the player's progression, making them more powerful as they find them throughout the game. Hiding chests and creating secret areas is my favorite part of level design. Secrets that are important to the player's progression are a very integral part of any Metroidvania style game. Many new hidden secrets and chests have been added to both of Guacamelee! STCE's new levels. This was an important part of the level design process.

Pimp my Temple

Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition features new moves, new enemies and new secrets, which is great, but that wouldn't be as meaningful if most of the game had been left unchanged. We decided to revisit the levels from the original game to ensure that they were set up to take advantage of the new mechanics and concepts that STCE has to offer. The process of re-tuning the old levels focused on three main areas: arena configurations, difficulty smoothing, and secrets integration.

Arena Configurations

The player is given a pretty major new ability in Guacamelee STCE, INTENSO. INTENSO provides players with a powerful tool that complements their arsenal of existing combat moves. Having such a powerful move available relatively early on in the game could throw off the balancing of the game's combat sections. With this in mind, many of the game's arenas were revisited and rebalanced. New combinations of enemies were included in arenas throughout the game, and some troublesome arenas were addressed; which brings us to our second area of focus: difficulty smoothing.

Difficulty Smoothing

Difficulty Smoothing is the process of balancing the game's difficulty to ensure players are challenged but not overly frustrated. A “difficulty spike” is when a section of the game suddenly becomes drastically more difficult than the preceding sections. It’s obviously important for there to be peaks and valleys in the level of challenge a player experiences while playing through a game, but frustrating difficulty spikes can lead to players giving up. For STCE we wanted to try and reduce the number of overly frustrating sections, so we re-tuned some of the arenas and platforming sections from the original game that were identified as difficulty spikes, e.g. the Tule Tree.

Tule Tree was the first major platforming challenge in the game

The changes to Tule Tree are subtle (we didn’t want to make it too easy!), but they help make the level more accessible by making the progression of difficulty more natural so that players can be better equipped to overcome the dimensional platforming sections.

Secrets Integration

Finally, Secrets Integration involved incorporating secrets into the old levels using the updated game's abilities and concepts. There aren't many, but they do have an impact on progression, especially for players who like to speedrun the game (especially 100% speedruns!).

Final Words

Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition is a much more dense game, but one that has been carefully planned and designed to blend new content with old. We hope you enjoy it! If you’d like to reach out to us with questions or comments, you can always find us on Twitter at @DrinkBoxStudios, or on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/DrinkBoxStudios.

Here's a sneak peek at the new Intenso power in Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition.

First, have a look at the .swf that plays after you bust up yet another of Uachivo's Choozo statues to unlock the Intenso power:

We had to abandon the rapidly flashing .swf style before releasing Guacamelee in Japan because the Japanese are much more strict about rapidly flashing lights than we North Americans are. We liked the style and applied it to all the .swfs when you unlock a new power.

Activating the Intenso ability summons a bolt of lightning that strikes Juan and Tostada, setting their bodies on fire, allowing them to move faster, and hit enemies harder. You'll also unleash a soccer-announcer-style Intenso yell.

Ever wanted to 2-hit a giant skeleton?

Normally you'd have to wail on these dudes for a good ten seconds before they'd go down.

Can you use Intenso whenever you want? NO! We make you work for it. You can only trigger Intenso once you get your Intenso meter (that meter below the yellow stamina squares in the HUD) above a certain threshold. You increase your meter by running up your combo count, or by destroying bright barrels scattered about the Guacamelee world. Once activated, your meter will drain, but not if you keep attacking enemies. It's kind of like that movie Crank.

When you break chests that look like the one below, your meter will get bigger, giving you more Intenso time.

Like stamina and health chests, you'll need to find 3 before you see any changes to your stats.

You'll also be able to buy upgrades to Intenso. With Shield Breaker, for example, you can perform any supermove and it will break any coloured shield barrier surrounding any enemy, even for bosses. Checkmate Javier.

We'll be sharing more news with you about Guacamelee! Super Turbo Champion Edition to reveal some more stuff we've crammed in.

Two years ago, we released Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack for the PlayStation Vita to great critical and fan acclaim. Last year, we did nothing Blob-related and shipped some wrestling game. This year, we’ve been working on ways to make the experience bigger and better for customers who want Mutant Blobs Attack in the living-room. Everything you love about Mutant Blobs Attack, available now for $7.99 on the PS3 and X360! And to celebrate...

Power Hat

A powerful new category of actual reality headheld controllers is on the horizon for the previous generation of next-gen platforms.

The Power Hat prototype, developed under the codename 'Project DrinkBoculus', is a DualShock 3 controller lashed to the top of a bike helmet with little bungee cords. Today, we are happy to announce the Power Hat offers full compatibility with 18% of Mutant Blobs Attack and 100% partial compatibility. (We’re still working on a Power Hat for the 360, but can't get the motion sensor in the 360 controller to work.)

We have also created a prototype commercial for our prototype, filmed under the codename: Project DrinkBoculus Commercial.

Join the #PowerHat Revolution

There is no hat that fits all heads. We want you to make a headheld controller that fits your skull, so we need you to make it yourself. Join our Power Hat hardware beta and help us shape a new generation of Mutant Blobs Attack players.

You can't spell Guacamelee without three Es. You'll need a few more to spell Super Turbo Championship Edition. Incidentally, Chris McQuinn and Augusto Quijano from DrinkBox will be showing off the Guacamelee! Super Edition demo in two ways:

1. If you're at E3, come say hi to us and try out the STCE demo on one of our two Xbox One stations.

2. If you're not at E3, Chris and Augusto will be streaming the STCE demo on Nintendo's Treehouse: Live @ E3 on Wednesday. We'll be sure to tweet just before we go on.

Also, next week is going to be a super big week for us (hint hint). We'll be tweeting out secret codes to unlock a secret thing all this week. Stay tuned!